For centuries, we have been providing dogs, cats, birds, fish, rabbits, chicken, horses, (or any animal in or near our house) security, comfort, and happiness by providing them some place to live, sleep, and eat. Unfortunately, very few people ever ask how they could equally help aquatic life. After having an unusually awakening experience as a professional diver, I finally did.

As a professional diver, it is common practice to remove litter and trash from the bottom of the ocean, and one day as I was removing a beer can, I was mysteriously surprised. For, out onto my boat crawled an entire family of little crabs! They stumbled out of the can like displaced refugees — totally lost and homeless. “What a shame!” I thought to myself, “to steal those crabs’ home-sweet-home.”

With more than 4000 dives in several seas around the world, I have been able to become familiar with fish and sea animal habits. Accordingly, I have observered their actions and needs, which are quite similar to any other land animal or pet. Basically, all creatures need a safe place to live, even sharks, octopus, and the ugliest sea creatures that live down there.

With that in mind, and with the ever-increasing, ever-present substantial fact that human beings are destroying the marine world every day, I have decided to do something by creating “fish condos.” These little concrete igloos are definitely an easy, cheap, and efficient way to offer the fish — which are feeding so many human beings everyday — a better way to live, to eat, to sleep, to reproduce themselves, just like we see with surface animals.

Many countries worldwide protect land animals, creating specific areas for them to survive, yet very few countries do the equivalent for the marine life. Costa Rica does, and our project with the artificial reef in Playa Hermosa, Guanacaste (the first of its kind approved in Costa Rica) will foster this idea. With the Hermosa Beach Association, close friends, great citizens, and you, we can all partner together to make progressive steps to create a better sea life for our fellow aquatic creatures.

You can generate a “spirit” for the reef too, and help to support these kind of initiatives by transmitting it to your friends, family, relatives, colleagues, clients, etc… Please check out our website for more information and details and to share our enthusiasm and energy.